Only a matter of time boys, until octopus-mother shares some words with the audience.
The cutest thing is how much some of their mothers respect their jobs, Mamanis keeps following Ina even after she tried to hide her streams from her, Pekomama was happy when finding out her daughter is a chuuba, even Kiara's mama is nice!
Not sure if this worth anything, but MatPat said in a recent video that there's enough ad revenue in being a youtube partner that people are going full time at only 10k subs. While the lesser performing Holos may be way behind in superchats and memberships, Ad revenue on top of merchandising are probably the bigger piece of the pie.
YouTube has a colossal amount of ads, to the point of being unbearable without adblockers. Considering that Hololive is very popular, plus many people watching YouTube from the apps, in which most people don't know how to make it ad free, there is a pretty fucking big pie to be shared lol!
Sora's first stream had 13 viewers. The grind was real.
Miko started as a competitor to Kizuna A.I. that flopped hard and almost considered quitting altogether, Mel got stalked hard and had to delay her debut to go after the fucker in court, HoloEN had nobody but themselves to rely on. You can say that the most recent talents have it easier, almost everyone gets 100k subs just by being in Hololive, but it's hard work from the point you get picked, onwards!
If I recall Hololive was quite discreet until Miko played that part in GTAV when Franklin gets roasted, after which she said the gamer word and the twitter body snatchers decided to "cancel" her, but it backfired and she became insanely popular.
That was the moment that saved Miko from irrelevance, yes. I don't think there is a single moment that can be pinpointed as the catalyst that made Hololive blow up, there are also Coco and Korone bringing in overseas viewers, Fubuki with the viral scatman video, plenty of moments are there to point at sudden booms of popularity!
And by the time 2nd gen debuted (certainly 3rd gen), it's become big enough you'd have to prove your salt before you can join. I shudder what would've happened to Subaru, who had no prior experience prior to Hololive and had nothing but passion, had she not gotten in at the time she did.
Yagoo liked her because of her determination, she walked in with nothing else to offer and that impressed him. Besides being a woman, she didn't really fit any of the other prerequisites, had no experience, just passion like you said. I do think Yagoo sees something in the people that would never see the doors of a normal entertainment venue, he picked up older talents, talents with no experience, socially anxious talents. You would never see someone like Pekora, Korone, Miko, Aqua in television or radio!